anticipation

HURTS: most anticipated new band this year.



album in june. fingernails bitten down as far as they can be.

mentoring

i find it awesome that after all, adam still speaks highly of his mentor, malcolm mclaren.

"he gave me an education. and then he told me about the construction of pop music...he'd throw 5,000 ideas at you, and you'd catch three of them; but those three of them could change history. that's, to me, i took it."

via adam-ant.net

the quietus: adam ant interview

massive adam ant interview at the Quietus

"I just don't like fucking Mr Bono. (Does an Irish accent) 'Every time I click my fingers, an African dies.' Well, stop clicking your fucking fingers, then!"

The Quietus | Features | A Quietus Interview | A Wild Nobility: An Adam Ant Exclusive By Simon Price

Val Emmich - E.S.T.

i am so looking forward to hearing val emmich's new album...here's a sneak listen:



not sure how i first became aware of him, but this song is what brought me in:



i grew up in such a sheltered existence (intentionally so), till i was about 24, so it surprises me that young people can recognize, and then express feelings so eloquently.

i grew up in the wrong generation. i'm convinced of that. but that is not to say i'd want to do it all again. no thanks.

the losers

we went to see the losers today. it was spectacularly bad. not one original moment in the entire movie, and they committed the significant crime of making chris evans unattractive. (who even knew that was possible?)

don't see this movie.

BFA

we have this neighbor, on whom the husband has had a crush for the past year. i walked over to say hello several months ago, and reported to the husband that neighbor isn't as good looking as he thought...but the husband didn't want to believe this to be true.

we nicknamed the neighbor "ryan gosling", because that's who the husband thought he resembles.

last night, we passed by the neighbor at the neighborhood market, and for the first time, the husband learned the awful truth.

Echo and the Bunnymen - Seven Seas

a facebook friend reminded me...

Hockey - Song Away

this alien loves this song...and so should you. and yay for dance parties.

bunny

adam ant hits the news once again, dribbling out little bits of album news. really nice to hear he's recording a tribute to malcolm mclaren, his onetime mentor. the quietus (who are they?) posts the following:

The B-side, meanwhile, will be 'Goofy Bunny', which Ant describes as "like a lullaby" a tribute to the late Malcolm McLaren.

...

He added that he had no resentment toward McLaren for using the original members off his Ants backing back to form Bow Wow Wow. "I was sore, but not with Malcolm," Ant explained. "It wasn’t Malcolm who betrayed me. It was Dave (Barbarossa), Matthew (Ashman) and Leigh (Gorman). I’d only known Leigh for 10 minutes and I was pissed off because he was the best bass player I’ve ever fucking seen, still is."

always good to read compliments between former coworkers, instead of bitterness.

regarding the "bunny" track: that was a demo during the recording of prince charming, and can be heard here:


adam & the ants - who's a goofy bunny then


several years later, adam released a reworking of the track on his album, strip:


adam ant - libertine

i'm looking forward to hearing it anew.
and in other WTF news: muse is coming to my area on their re-tour of north america...but they're booked at a casino? i've seen shows at this venue, and it's fine and all...but muse should totally do arena shows. only.

kick-ass

after my couple of anticipatory posts about the movie, kick-ass, i am relieved to have liked it as much as i did. though it started out slower than the trailers would indicate, the movie delivered all it promised, with engaging characters and action scenes all wrapped up in comic-book stylings.

a note about nicolas cage, please? last weekend, the husband and i watched lord of war on dvd, and it reminded me that everytime i see nic cage in something that isn't blockbuster-aimed, i'm absolutely enamored of him and his loopy characterizations. so why do i get that ugh-i-won't-see-that feeling when his name appears on a poster or trailer? i'll never watch con-air voluntarily, but vampire's kiss will always be on my list of gotta-see-it-agains.

so, kick-ass: a recommendation? absolutely. (as is lord of war.)

pandorum

the husband rented pandorum last night...something i wanted to see, based on the very cleverly edited trailer, which accurately indicated a haunted spaceship monster story. what the trailers missed, however, was the not overwhelming amount of stupid dialogue.

still: imagine alien mixed with solaris mixed with i am legend, then add some gorgee men (and ben foster, the husband's favorite...no accounting for taste), and you have pandorum.

for which i have no complaints. adequately suspenseful, good eye candy, momentary horror here and there. a recommendation? eh, if it's on basic cable, i suppose.

but tim gunn is MY hero

must-see this weekend

i must talk the husband into seeing this, this weekend...his birthday weekend:



note: trailer NSFW. parents, send your kids out of the room.

invisible light

after a much-too-long absence from the (virtual) record store bins, the scissor sisters teased facebook fans monday night, posting that tuesday is an important day. so tuesday morning, the husband is up and out of bed, looking for SS news...which didn't show up until after he'd left for work.

but, the new track from the band, invisible light, is awesome.



is that patrick stewart? UPDATE: nope, ian mckellen!

fear of drowning

i've been meaning to post this track, fear of drowning, by mirrors, for several days now, but other things (my birthday, malcolm mclaren's death, the mormons) got in the way.

so here it is...another song that's been on heavy rotation on my iphone for the past few weeks, actually. it is exactly the sound of my college summers around 1982-ish; a sound from which i just can't tear myself. so if you like a flat-ish voice wailing over poppy synths washed over by big synth waves, with maybe a bagpipe-sounding something thrown in (and who doesn't?):



fear of drowning, mirrors

interestingly, this doesn't seem to be available on the usual music sites (no amazon, no itunes). so where does one go to buy it?

coming soon

here's the cover art for the new blondie cd, coming out in june(?)...



and a vid of the band covering michael jackson's "don't stop":



how many more sleepless nights for me until june?

illustration courtesy of www.blondie.net; video posted by 10thst

unreliable sources

this is what i'm reading about the re-launch of blondie.net, and the new album:


http://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2357538

Well some info and this (small) graphic is apparently the album cover, the album title is Panic of Girls. The title is still settling with me but I'm liking the artwork or at least what I can see of it 

 

The proper announcement is due on Monday as they are re-launching the official site Blondie.net 

+ also: Paul Carbonara left the group and a guy named Tommy Kessler has joined as a guitarist. Can't say I have warmed up to any of the post-reunion band members enough to care really about any departures but the new guy is supposedly good enough, still no Jimmy though for this project.

 and, http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=4964420402b191900df9dbfdca4ccd00&t=67761

Blondie - Panic of Girls (the new album)

---

This thumbnail of the album cover has leaked and the title of the album is supposedly Panic of Girls, the official announcement and site re-launch for Blondie.net will be this Monday 

very recent history

watching judge judy again: how is it that so many people use the phrase "i was currently [working, residing, whatever] at...".

*tries to do something currently in the past*

family

not seeking sympathy, just stating a fact: nobody in the mormon side of my family have acknowledged the husband in all the time we've been together.

in those three and a half years, he's been pictured in xmas cards that go to them, he's been mentioned in short news blasts or extended picture albums about vacations, he was mentioned when they called to see how "i" was surviving the wildfires.

but at no time have the mormon family asked about him. this (among enough others) is one reason i don't bother with them anymore.

not seeking sympathy, just stating a fact.

the mormon church says they're all about family. i think they're all about being motherfuckers.

hurts more

the new band i'm stalking, hurts, has another single coming out, video in two weeks, single not till may...but what's available online today is only a preview (minute and a half). you can hear it at arjanwrites blog, here.

their album will be out end of this summer. but that's way, way too long to be teasing us with these dribbles of previews.

so this year, i'm currently looking forward to albums from the following; i'm sure the list will grow:

• blondie
  
• alphaville
  
• adam ant
  
• human league
  
• devo
  
• hurts

sorta stuck in the 80's, am i not.

malcolm and me

so malcolm mclaren passed away today. press reports recount how he swindled so many of his musical underlings and the trail of bad vibes he left behind. but me, i'm a fan.

several years ago, he followed up the opera-infused album, fans, with the glorious waltz darling. the week it came out, i dragged visiting friends from utah up to encinitas, to shop at lou's records.

at lou's, i found the CD; on the way home, i popped the disc into my discman (a portable CD player one could use in one's car, before car sound systems had CD players as a standard feature). a couple of tracks in, i was going on and on about how much i liked the album...to which utah scott replied, "yeah, if you like that sort of thing."

whutevs, scott.

years later, mclaren put out paris, another hit for me, panned by pretty much everyone in the music press. the few releases that came after paris didn't really engage me, and i lost track of what he'd been up to. still...sorry to hear he's gone. fans always wonder if there's one more great release pending within their idol's brain / heart. i knew mclaren would find his. now, i guess he didn't.

i wonder what adam ant will have to say about this?



something's jumping in my shirt, malcolm mclaren

and another year

more todayswork,

today at work: my first conference call was from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM; my second conference call was from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. and that was pretty much my whole day, except for a few daily production tasks that i have to attend to here and there.
nothing like a few meetings to prevent one from getting anything done.

today's discriminatory term: mantique: a gay man over the age of 50.

today's potential injury: was helping the husband to the car, stepped off the front porch onto a garden rock, as opposed to the gravel i was aiming for...twisted my foot, but no residual pain or bruising.